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The purpose of this paper is to study whether organisations, in this case libraries, continue to plan after having done so at least once, and whether they conduct planning on a routine basis.

The websites of 71 libraries, that in 2006 had a strategic or long-term plan, were analysed to determine whether in 2016 they had a new plan in place. Where there was none or where the name of the plan had changed, e-mails were sent to the head librarian to ascertain the reasons.

A total of 71.83 per cent of the libraries in the sample had a new plan underway in October 2016, i.e., ten years later. A significant rise (+8.03 per cent) in the number of three-year plans was observed relative to 2006, perhaps because the crisis and resulting uncertainty have induced libraries to narrow their decision-making windows. A preference for the term “strategic plan”: over “long-range plan” was also detected in 2016.

The study provides empirical evidence of the existence of routine planning. The continuity of plans in a series of libraries shows that in practice planning is a systematic, continuous and iterative activity, as contended in planning theory.

A typological analysis of the management‐related documents that Spanish university libraries show on their Web sites is provided. The paper discusses about the structure and contents of the Web pages; provides some analysis on the location of the documents in the pages; and presents a view of document changes after 1 year, taking into account their presence and currency.

This paper aims to show the main action areas to which public libraries are devoting their efforts and resources at the onset of the twenty‐first century, despite their own particularities and needs.

The methodology is based on a comparative analysis on a sample of so‐called “strategic” and “long‐term” plans from US public libraries covering from 1998 through 2010. Of all identified priorities, those appearing in at least 40 per cent of the plans were used for the analysis. Thus, the paper narrowed the list of priorities down to the five most repeated ones in the sample of plans, and their peculiarities are set forth here.

The paper finds that, although the method used is a simple one and the results are limited to the set of libraries whose plans have been analysed, there are coincidences with some predictions in some papers on the role public libraries should play in the twenty‐first century.

In the long term, this type of research permits comparison of trends among libraries from different countries and the monitoring of how they evolve with time. It can also be useful to library managers as a benchmark.

This paper aims to show the impact of consortia purchased periodical publications on document supply services. These services have undergone considerable changes over the last five years, first decreasing but now recovering.

First, this paper reviews the most recent specialised literature, focusing mainly on the impact of electronic journals in libraries, their effects, and proposed actions. Second, as an example of this new behaviour, presents the document supply service data, as collected in one hospital's health‐science library in the last four years.

As evidenced by the literature, the users' acceptance of electronic journals has undoubtedly been excellent. Consortia purchasing projects have become a basic tool that expand collections, support cooperative technological development, and require negotiating skills from librarians. But these mass purchases do not seem to be the ideal solution for libraries, they entail losing freedom when choosing the collection and often make library collections homogeneous by publisher.

Reflects on what possible causes have led to the current situation and the current way to manage the collection.

An analysis of both form and content differences between the plans named “strategic” and those named “long‐range”. Planning theory is checked against the planning reports available on the Web pages of 65 public and university libraries. The goal is to see whether the differences that some theorists observe between strategic and long‐range planning actually exist on plans published with those names.

The purpose of this paper is to review the websites of 22 national libraries in Ibero-America to determine whether and how effectively they display these organisations’ mission statements, as well as any convergence/divergence among these texts.

A review was conducted of the national library websites of ABINIA’s 22 members to locate their respective mission statements. The statements identified were analysed and evaluated against the positioning and presence criteria and wording proposed by experts.

Website content clearly attests to national libraries’ eagerness to publicise their mission statements, which are readily accessible in most cases. Their functions are represented to a more or less standard pattern. Most are portrayed as institutions responsible for custodying, enriching, preserving and disseminating their countries’ cultural legacy. Other purposes mentioned include the promulgation of and accessibility to the heritage custodied.

The paper may prove useful for professional librarians involved in drafting or revising their organisation’s mission statement in the wake of changing circumstances or on the occasion of the formulation of a new strategic plan.

Of the very short number of analyses of libraries’ mission statements published to date, none discusses national libraries. This is the very first study of national library mission statement in Ibero-America. It forms part of a line of research dealing with national library mission statements defined and available on institutional websites for countries anywhere in the world.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the level of transparency of the libraries of Catalan universities that are members of the Consortium of University Services of Catalonia (CSUC).

The analysis involved reviewing the information available on the websites of the ten libraries belonging to CSUC. For each library’s website, the presence of 18 indicators was explored. These indicators had been defined by the Commitment and Transparency Foundation (Spain).

There is a notable difference between the level of transparency of Catalan universities and their libraries. Moreover, the universities’ culture of transparency is not reflected in that of the libraries. Four of the libraries can be considered transparent because they have accomplished from 12 to 18 indicators; three can be considered “translucent”, due to their indicators ranging from 11 to 7 points; and three are considered opaque as a result of obtaining from 1 to 5 indicators.

There is a need to review the volume and quality of information that can be consulted on library websites, considering that all services and entities funded with public money must inform citizens of the principles that govern their management and the results obtained.

The information regarding transparency is incomplete and should be organised with parameters that make it easier to find. Libraries that occupy the lowest positions in the ranking all belong to private universities. Their poor results are due to the lack of information justifying their management or providing information on how the service is organised. Some conclusions of this study are very similar to those of the study on Madrid’s Madroño Consortium (Pacios Lozano, 2016) which has been taken into account in this paper.

A brief review of the concept connotations in the area of information services is carried out, trying to stress the implications of being “customer oriented” as the most important component of marketing. A model to measure the level of the library’s orientation toward its market – as perceived by its managers – is presented. It was designed taking into account the models that major specialists prepared in order to evaluate marketing activity in companies. It should allow librarians to establish to what extent the library is properly user oriented and, at the same time, what specific marketing‐related aspects it is failing in or should improve at.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the current evaluation processes and experiences among Latin American university libraries.

This study is based on the results of a questionnaire sent to 31 libraries in seven countries.

It was found that most libraries evaluate some aspect of their services, but the frequency of these actions does not appear to be very consistent. They seem to have an acceptable level of computerization, but some of them neither take advantage of nor make the most of it. Only a few libraries perform an evaluation to improve their management and few libraries have enough historical data sets to permit comparative studies.

The response rate is limited, with just 51.6 percent of surveyed institutions (16 questionnaires returned of the 31 sent).

The paper can aid Latin American university libraries to analyze their evaluation needs in a common forum and to reach agreements as to what are the most appropriate indicators to measure their performance. This will help them in the long term to improve the quality of their services and the value of their role in the performance of the university.

This survey is the first to be carried out to discover the existing situation in Latin America.

This paper aims to show the progress made by 37 universities in Spain in adopting the “Information Commons” model, a strategy planed 10 years ago by the Spanish University Library Network (hereafter referred to as REBIUN) to meet the demands of the European Higher Education Area.

A Web survey was sent to 70 supervisors or directors of Spanish university libraries.

This paper reveals current approaches toward the goal of convergence and provides an idea of the extent to which universities have thus far managed to integrate services and resources in the Information Commons. Not all libraries have initiated this path or it is still in its early stages and the transformation is taking place at different “speeds” or degrees of implementation.

The paper shows, for the first time, that the incomplete, scant or absent integration of university services and resources in an Information Commons has to do with multiple factors in each library. The human factor is the key element in this type of change process. Commitment, network building and synergies are thus necessary factors in the success of this process.